Sleepy Hollow: Deliverance

You know, when I half-heartedly hoped for some degree of focus on Katrina in the hopes that it would grant her some personality and/or agency, having her impregnated by the forces of evil was really not what I had in mind. Ack, what is going on with this show? My feelings on this episode can be summed up in Abbie's facial expressions:

I don't really have a lot to say, so allow me to forego the usual summary and just discuss things point-by-point:

The Plot:

Katrina is impregnated by a spider created by her own son to give birth to Moloch, but after a gunfight at an abandoned warehouse with members of the Hellfire Club, Ichabod retrieves a crystal hidden inside a tablet that gets held up to the sunlight and summons the Aurora Borealis (seriously?) which somehow destroys Moloch while he's still inside Katrina. It's really weird. Really, really weird.

And now Moloch is an amoeba sitting in a glass jar in Henry's lair? Like I said, weird.

Ichabod and Katrina:

I have no real investment in these two as a couple, but at least they actually felt like a couple this time around. As weird as it was to see them in bed together, I actually felt a smidgeon of chemistry between the two of them – provided of course that it was meant to be a memory of their past and not just a nightmare. It's hard to tell when Ichabod rips off his face and a spider crawls out of his mouth.

Whatever my issues with Katrina, I have no problem with Katia Winter, who (judging from certain interviews I've seen) is very conscious of her character's unpopularity and yet is clearly still making every effort to sell all the dreck she's given in the scripts.

I don't mind that Katrina is set on redeeming Henry, or in pleading with Ichabod that it's possible – in fact she makes a decent point when she says his behaviour towards them isn't born out of apathy, but deep emotion. But it doesn't really match her previous characterization. Up until this point she's been very insistent that Ichabod look at the bigger picture and fulfil his role as Witness – much like Abbie, in fact. Who indeed points out to Ichabod that there are bigger things at stake here than whatever vague redemption arc the writers have in store for John Noble. I'm glad that she gets to confront him, but the story doesn't allow her to posit another option. Their mission at this point is to stop Moloch from being born, and though I can understand why the writers might not want to tackle the subject of abortion, they could have at least given Abbie the chance to advocate another option.

(Naturally it's Katrina who comes up with the idea to just shoot her, but Abbie says: "when Crane first fell on that battlefield all those years ago, and all the voices of heaven and hell were shouting in your ear "let him die" – you found another way to save him. We will find another way to save you." Okay, I'll admit, that was a pretty stirring speech - in fact, it made those events sound much more epic than they actually were).

Abbie:

Is she coming back soon? Because I'm tired of seeing my favourite character getting side-lined. I suspect Nicole Beharie is too, and she spent most of this episode looking (rightfully) fed up. I trust I wasn't the only one to notice that Abbie gathered more intelligence on their enemies' plans in one afternoon than Katrina did over the course of several weeks.

And where the heck is Jenny? I'm pretty sure she got more screen-time as a recurring guest-star than an actual regular featured in the opening credits. I know there's an episode coming up that deals with Abbie and Jenny's mother, and at this point it really can't come quickly enough.

Oh, and they finally establish that Abbie is in fact financially supporting Ichabod.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I liked that Abbie was given the chance to remind Ichabod that she knows better than anyone what it means to have the right to voting. At first I thought the scene was a little heavy-handed, but given the crap that popped up on my Tumblr dash today, we need all the reminding we can get.

Nice moment of unease on Katrina's face when Ichabod suggests all their daughters will be: "enchantresses like their mother."

It's odd that Henry keeps referring to Abraham as an "old friend" as clearly they're neither.
I'd actually forgotten all about Headless's issues with sunlight. But why does it affect him and not the Horseman of War?

Katrina finally gets modern attire and Abbie tells her that it was "a drunk Goth chick's clothes." Hey, her words not mine.

Here's a great idea: put a tight corset on a woman with abdominal pain.

Sheriff Reyes is back, in a subplot that would have been more interesting if it was actually the main plot. One of this show's initial strengths was the fact that the supernatural aspects played out against a backdrop of real-life consequences and a genuine attempt at portraying a competent police force, and so when Abbie shares news of the Hellfire Club and Reyes responds with a SWAT team – well, it's a thing. Let's see if there's continuation of it next week (probably not).

What was up with the cadaver that had the same symptoms as Katrina? If it was a "failed experiment" to raise Moloch then where did Henry get the extra whatever-it's-called blood to impregnate the mystery woman?

Moloch's nickname is "the Horrid King"? He might want to think about changing that.

I like the implication that Ichabod has learnt CPR after his scare at the library. It annoys me that people are calling it an inconsistency.

Where's Katrina's coven? We know that Reverend Nap was a part of it, and that he was immortal, so shouldn't there be more of those guys somewhere in the neighbourhood. That would be a good way of making Katrina interesting, not this "Vessel of Moloch" stuff.

Long story short, I'm tired of the Crane family drama. It's just not compelling enough, especially when the world is at stake, and especially when it's built on such tired old tropes. The delight of the show in its first season was its commitment to subverting those tropes (except, ironically, in the case of Katrina, so I guess they're being consistent on that score) and though the attempt was made to make Ichabod and Henry's confrontation the crux of the episode, I just couldn't bring myself to care that much. You know what would be more interesting?  Two parents realizing that their child is pure evil and needs to be stopped at all costs.

Next week: a Succubus and Hawley. I may well end up skipping it.